Sam yukked. Santo yukked with “nigger something” mixed in. Carlos poked him with the golf club. Santo shut up.

Wayne picked up a pointer and tapped the column lines. A toga fool brought in three fresh Kahlъas. The Boys imbibed. Carlos poked the toga fool with the golf club. The toga fool vamoosed.

The booze smell made Wayne queasy. Sweat pooled on his shirt.

“Black Cat Cab. South L.A., as well. Tiger Kab served us handsomely in Miami and Vegas, and Pete B. sold the Vegas end to Milt Chargin last summer. We’ll use it for cash flow, cook the books and launder low-end skim through it. I think I can talk Milt into coming to L.A. to run the place. Beyond that, I’ve got a friend on the Feds who’s running a Cointelpro in the area, and we’ll have Milt log tips and feed them to him, which will keep Mr. Hoover on our side.”

Sam said, “I know your friend.”

Santo shuddered. “Dwight ‘the Enforcer’ Holly.”

Carlos sipped Kahlua. “A man with coon-hunter credentials of his own.”

Sam said, “Yeah, which is not to say that he’s in Wayne’s league.”

Santo sipped Kahlua. “Nobody’s in Wayne’s league.”

Carlos said, “Dwight’s a white man.”

Sam sipped Kahlua. “So’s Milt Chargin, for a fucking Jew.”

Carlos sipped Kahlua. “Milt’s an amateur comedian. He’ll be hobknobbing with the shines and having a high old time.”

Sam said, “Milt told me a good one. ‘What do you call a naked nigger sitting alone in a tree?’ ”

Santo sipped Kahlua. “So tell us the punch line, dickhead.”

Sam said, “The branch manager.”

Santo howled.

Carlos twirled his golf club. “What’s the matter, Wayne? You’re not laughing.”

Morty Sidwell had an office at 2nd and Fremont. He did bail bonds, divorce, missing persons. LVPD considered him kosher.

Wayne drove over. He was tracking Reginald Hazzard part-time now. A cop pal ran a fifty-state dead-body check. It hit negative. Ditto for arrest reports. Ditto for male Negro John Does, late ‘63.

Reginald was bookish. Mary Beth told him that. Wayne combed the checkout files of all the Vegas libraries. 6am-the kid checked out twenty-nine books in fall ‘63.

Advanced-chemistry texts. Books on left-wing political theory. Odd books on Haitian voodoo herbs.

Sidwell’s office was above a topless joint. Wayne parked out back and took the exterior stairs. The club noise was brutal. Amplifier hum shook the walls. Bass thumps pulsed the floorboards.

Morty was sprawled on the couch. The office was hot. Morty wore a washcloth on his forehead. He saw Wayne and went oy vey. The walls featured Morty-and-friends art. There’s Morty with Dino, Morty with Lawrence Welk, Morty with the late JFK.

Wayne straddled a chair. Reverb wobbled the slats. It was a social-protest song with a sexy dance beat.

Morty adjusted his washcloth. “Earplugs don’t help, so I tried acoustical baffling. The owner and I settled on a compromise. Once a week, he sends one of the girls up. I get a sponge bath and a header. It’s beneficial to my overall health.”

Wayne said, “My name is-”

“I know who you are. Your daddy hired me to run a schvartze bongo player out of town in ‘58. He was a one-hit wonder. ‘Bongo in the Congo’ and no more. He was shtupping your stepmom, Janice, at the Golden Gorge Motel.”

Wayne laughed. Morty said, “Condolences, though. I know they both passed away last summer.”

Wayne shut his eyes and popped two aspirin. The chair slats rattled. The floorboards jumped.

Morty said, “Normally, I’d say ‘How’s tricks,’ but with you I know they’re always tricky. This tempts me to say, ‘What do you want?’ ”

Wayne opened his eyes. “Reginald Hazzard. It was almost five years ago. The kid disappeared, the parents hired you to find him.”

Morty yawned. “Yeah, I remember. Nice colored folks. Cedric and Mary Beth. Cedric got offed by a shvoogie hump named Pappy Dawkins. It’s a real load of joy you’re bringing me, I got to say.”

“What happened with the investigation?”

“It went nowhere and my clients ran out of money. I ran some DB checks and told them that, to the best of my knowledge, the kid was still alive. That’s it, over and out.”

Tick, tick, tick-his old cop shit detector.

Wayne said, “There’s more.”

Morty said, “Nix.”

“There’s more, you know there’s more, I know it, I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

Morty pulled the washcloth over his eyes and held up three fingers. Wayne dropped three C-notes on his chest. The amplifier hum accelerated. The JFK picture shook.

Morty said, “The Hazzard kid hitchhiked out of Vegas. I’m talking like Christmas ‘63 or into the new year. He gets popped for vag at some little pissant shitkicker town on the California border, and don’t ask me the name, because there’s a zillion little bumfuck towns like that and I really can’t remember. Sooo, Reggie’s got a gun on him. Sooo, the cops book him for vag and a gun charge and beat the piss out of him. Soooo, this white woman shows up and bails him out, and Reggie and the white woman abscond, never to be seen again. It was a cash bail and a fake ID, and the case went cold and Cedric and Mary Beth ran out of coin. I told Cedric this, but he said, ‘Don’t you tell Mary Beth, ‘cause all of this would just kill her.’ ”

Wayne said, “More details.” Morty held up two fingers. Wayne dropped two yards on his chest.

Morty chewed a hangnail. “Soooo, it’s a fucked-up little redneck PD. They don’t keep records. The cops come and go and run wetback fruit-picking crews on the side. They live to drink home brew and beat up beaners and coloreds, and whatever paperwork they had got lost, misplaced or stolen. Those cops comprised a grim experience for me, and that’s all the news that’s fit to print.”

Wayne stood up. “Did you get a description of the white woman?”

“That I can give you. She was supposedly pale and in her late thirties, she wore glasses, had long dark hair with gray streaks, and a cop said something about a bad scar on one of her arms.”

41

(Los Angeles, 10/1/68)

Minstrel Show.

Marsh Bowen worked. He owned Vince amp; Paul’s. The white cops’ bar done got BAAAAAAAAD BROTHERED.

Marsh was seven nights in. He spawned racial tsuris with soulful aplomb. The white cops knew he was a cop. That got him in. That did not excuse his black-power stud behavior.

Marsh with the muscle-man tank top. Marsh with the modest Afro. Marsh all over the white chicks-but no hard moves yet.

Dwight watched.

It was his seventh night. He perched near the bar and played tourist from Des Moines. No cops recognized him. Who’s that big goofball? He sure likes this place. He wears sandals and high-water pants.

Hate was building. Dwight tracked it. Who dot bell-bottomed Mandingo? Scotty Bennett showed up every night. Scotty boozed, Scotty eyeballed Marsh, Scotty acted covetous and puerile. Scotty radar-tracked Marsh and his barmaid girlfriend every spare moment.

Dwight picked at a cheese puff. Marsh chatted up two cop-groupie stews. He shagged hors d’oeuvres off their plates and sipped their drinks uninvited. The girls looooved it.

Dwight watched. The Marsh Bowen gestalt intensified. Marsh was a preener and a player. Marsh might be duplicitous. Marsh should be preemptively spot-tailed. Tail-job prospect: that half-smart Crutchfield kid.

Dwight yawned. His stomach growled back. Food fucked with his mental momentum. Niggertown was seething. Jack Leahy fed him gossip. All this militant shit gored the LAPD’s gonads. Off-duty cops were indulging klantics. Station-house tune-ups. Panthers waylaid and shit-kicked. Trumped-up dope busts, trumped-up drunk rousts, trumped-up warrant checks and-